The Greatest Democratic Celebration on Earth
Blog: JOSEP COLOMER'S BLOG
Hundreds
of millions of Indian citizens have begun to vote and they will keep doing it
for six weeks. Indian democratic elections are the most massive human
mobilizations in the world —more than any other election, war, pilgrimage,
migration movement, or world fair. There are more than one million polling
stations and even a team of elephants to carry voting machines to the Himalaya.
Unlike in many other democracies, electoral turnout in India is higher among
the poor than among the rich, among the less educated than among the graduates,
in the villages than in the cities. Since the last elections, five years ago,
women vote (a little) more than men.
The
success of democracy in India has dismissed the pessimistic auguries after the
independence and the first election in 1952. But India is not an isolated case.
Let's see the numbers. A little more than half of the world's population lives
in democracy. Let's consider that "rich" countries are those above the world
average per capita income (in purchasing power, around $ 18,000 per year), and
"poor" are those below that threshold. About half of the world population
living in democracy lives in relatively poor countries (including India, but
also Indonesia, South Africa, and others), while about half of the population
living in dictatorships lives in relatively rich countries (including China,
but also S. Arabia, Russia, and others).
Some
traditional sociologists have been puzzled by the India case because it does
not fit the classical doctrine that economic development must precede democracy:
from Seymour Lipset to Adam Przeworski, who has "repeatedly predict India as a
dictatorship" before 2030. Yet, India is not an exception or an anomaly. The
earliest modern democracies, such as Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom,
or the United States, had also enforced broad male suffrage for competitive
elections in the nineteenth century when they were fairly poor, as poor as
India was in the mid-twentieth century or as is now.
For
about forty years after independence, when the government was dominated by the
Indian National Congress party, initially led by Jawaharlal Nehru, the
centralized and closed Indian economy grew at an often-mocked annual rate of
1%. But since the early 1990s, when it has liberalized and opened to new
technologies and globalization, India has enjoyed significant benefits from
open trade and capital inflows. Against all expectations, the Indian per capita
income at purchasing power has multiplied by five in thirty years. Precisely
because India was late in adopting more sophisticated institutions and
policies, it has been able to adapt more readily to the global economy. In
contrast to developed countries with old technologies and onerous preexisting
social arrangements, India has not had to dismantle former industrial and
bureaucratic structures that might have obstructed innovation.
Consequently,
the Indian citizens declare to prefer democracy to an authoritarian regime in a
proportion of four to one. In the most recent international poll by the Pew
Research Center, 72% of Indian citizens declare to be satisfied with the way
democracy works in their country --only after Sweden and in contrast with, for
example, 33% in the United States. (Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes
& Trends, 2024).
The Congress
Party, always led by Nehru's descendants Gandhi family, and the current incumbent
People's Party (BJP) led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have alternated in
government seven times. The electoral system is a copy of the colonial British
tradition of single-member districts by simple plurality rule, which permits a
party with less than 40% of votes to get an absolute majority of seats in the lower
chamber of parliament. Yet, while numerous minor parties run independently, the
two larger parties run in very broad electoral coalitions: in the current
election, the incumbent BJP has formed a National Democratic Alliance with 12 mostly
state-based or ethnic parties, while the opposition Congress is running in an
India National Development Inclusive Alliance (to fit the acronym INDIA) with
23 parties, including several on the far left. Their participation in federal
politics also works as a factor of Indian union.
After
the end of the Cold War, the old Indian foreign policy of "non-alignment" was
initially replaced with one of "strategic autonomy." India remains outside the
United Nations Security Council, despite having become a nuclear power, and
outside the Group of Seven despite being the fourth democratic economy in size.
Nevertheless, India has become more dynamic in supporting the democratization
of its neighboring countries in South Asia, which is still a poorly integrated
region. It is also the oldest and most stable democracy of the so-called BRICS
group, now enlarged to nine members, and it has recently increased its
relations and deals with the United States and the European Union in a world of
fluctuating international coalitions. From a global and historical perspective,
democracy in India is already one of the most remarkable contemporary achievements
of humankind.
Also in Spanish and Catalan in La Vanguardia:https://www.lavanguardia.com/opinion/20240429/9605408/mayor-fiesta-democratica-mundo.html
